A richly glittering debut about the interlocked fates of two women, raised worlds apart, who must join forces on an extraordinary journey, diving leagues beneath the water's surface --- and straight into the fathomless heart of fear, forgiveness and love.

Twelve years ago, Otta escaped her small town, determined to become a marine biologist. Now she’s returned, carrying the guilt of a friend’s disappearance during a deep-sea dive and unsure she’ll ever be able to dive again. Then a stranger appears at her door.

This stranger, May, says that her daughter has run away, and insists that she’s under the nearby lake --- alive. To find the missing girl, Otta and May must travel deeper and deeper beneath the water, confronting webs of fear, control and delusion borne of a rampant nostalgia for a purer world. Along the way, they will also push their bodies to the mortal limit.

Hypnotic and arresting, UNDERLAKE brings a poet’s attention to language, evoking the ethereal work of Marilynne Robinson, Lauren Groff and Emily St. John Mandel and the imaginative brio of Margaret Atwood. In taking her place as a major new voice in American fiction, McCoy shrewdly explores the American obsession with inheritance, property and race, asking how we stake our claim on the timeline of history --- and who we erase in the process.